Book Cathi Hight for Your Next Event

Think Strategically, Navigate Market Changes, and Build a Sustainable Future with Cathi Hight
Meeting planners, business executives and corporate training managers count on Cathi’s expertise and leadership skills to achieve their business goals. Her presentation style is conversational, down-to-earth and enlightening. Through storytelling and hands-on activities, Cathi engages participants to be part of the learning process. Book Cathi Hight for your next event.

Cathi has that rare combination of expertise, style, and the ability to connect with the audience. Considered as a thought-leader in the association industry, she provides valuable insights and solutions that participants can use as soon as they get back.

With her career background as an association executive, sales and marketing manager, entrepreneurship trainer, productivity coach, and process-improvement trainer, Cathi’s accumulated knowledge is shared through her diverse portfolio of presentation topics.

Conference Topics and Seminars

Here are just some of the popular topics Cathi offers. Presentations can be customized for conference themes or audiences.

Strategic Direction

Strategic Alignment: Leading from the Outside… In
Old paradigms and market changes require associations to assess the landscape, evaluate operations, and develop course corrections. Serving a diverse membership can pull you in many different directions, strain your limited resources and result in ineffectiveness, high staff turnover, and weaken your position in the market. Striking a balance between leading your community and being all things to all members is difficult. Explore how to develop strategically align with your constituents, programming and staffing structure to ensure your association’s success.

Change Management: Dealing with Constant Restructuring and Reorganization
Change is today’s only constant. People don’t resist change; they experience challenges and success in managing the transitions of change. Knowing the natural response to change initiatives, we can anticipate others’ responses and provide the support needed. Explore the natural responses to transitioning to change and a model to use when implementing larger organizational change initiatives.

It’s a Whole New World for Associations
Several major shifts have changed the landscape for associations including economic conditions, demographics, time poverty and technology. Our traditional model that has served the business community for over 100 years may be in jeopardy. Explore how associations are fighting for relevance and how to create a game plan to ensure you are essential to your members and the community you serve.

Membership Value

Solutions Broker: Your Role in the Value Chain
Let’s face it: your members can’t imagine their day without Starbucks or Facebook. It’s where they get their mojo or know what’s going on around them. With so many competing sources in today’s world, it’s getting harder to attract new members and for current ones to recognize the value of membership. How can your association become so essential that it’s the first place they think to access for information, connections and solutions to their businesses?

A New Approach to Tiered Membership
More than 50% of the chambers in the U.S have moved from a Fair Share to Tiered model and the concept isn’t really new. So, why is membership growth still flat? Maybe the way we design tiered models isn’t working well. With increasing demands to deliver ROI for membership, many chamber models are falling short of providing benefits that really matter. Explore the new approach to creating a tiered model that increases the value of membership and positions your Chamber as an essential investment.

The VOI of Membership is Greater than the ROI
Members who ask about ROI don’t see the value of their membership. Members who love you talk about VOI, not ROI. ROI (Return On Investment) focuses on the same or higher amount of $$ invested. Although you can’t always deliver a return on $$, you have delivered on the Value of I, where I means more than Investment. Explore the power of VOI and how to change the way you communicate the value of membership.

Build Strong Teams

The 8 Dimensions of Leadership
To be an effective leader you need to know your strengths—but that’s only part of the story. You also need a broad perspective on all the behaviors needed to be an effective leader. Explore the 8 different dimensions of effective leaders; the strengths and weaknesses; and opportunities and downsides of various leadership elements. Identify your primary leadership dimension and helps you understand the psychological drivers, motivations, and “blind spots” characteristic of your style.

5 Essentials for Developing the Dream Team
We’ve been on more dysfunctional teams than dream teams. What does it take to develop a team with a foundation of trust, minimal conflicts, commitment, accountability and results? Explore the five essential behaviors of a cohesive team and how to create an organization that attracts and keeps the best talent.

Work Smarter, Not Harder: Master the 12 Skills of Time Management
You’ve often heard someone mention they need ‘time-management’ help. Did you know there are 12 time management skills areas? There’s a good chance that you don’t suck in all of them! So, which skill area do you really need to improve on? Discover your time management strengths and crate an action plan to improve your skills.

Are you interested in booking Cathi to speak at an upcoming event? To get a price quote, please fill out our online request form.

Testimonials

I work with a variety of speakers, and Cathi was a delight – organized, detail-oriented and deadline-friendly. Better yet, she received great reviews from our attendees. One noted, ‘Cathi’s program actually allowed me to completely revisit how I perceive volunteer leadership and my own effectiveness.’ Cathi is that rare combination of a professional who is a breeze to work with and delivers thought-provoking content.

Cathi Hight delivered exactly what my members needed: effective ways to identify the value their chamber provides to the different types of members they have along with ways to deliver that value through an effective membership model.

—Lisa Weitzel, Illinois Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives

The evaluations of your sessions came out as a ‘5’ – the top score! The comments were all positive and more than one noted that you should have had a longer time slot! I certainly agree. You were the rock of our conference! Your presentations stretched the thinking of conference attendees and provided tangible takeaways that will help chambers right away. Individuals left your sessions wanting more which is a great testimony to you since you delivered incredible content with numerous ideas and participants simply could not get enough! So, you were more than a rock….you were the rock star of this conference! “Thank you for all you did to go over and beyond expectations to make this first combined conference of the Oregon/Washington chambers a huge success.